Golden Fur
by TheBookFiend
Summary: "Have a cat. Bye!" "Woah, wait! What!" Nico I'd not expecting Lou Ellen to appear in the middle of the night, he's expecting her to give him a yellow cat even less. (Solangelo Fluff Will develop. Probably.) (Rated T because I'm paranoid.)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N I started another fic! This one should be a maximum of 8 chapters, I'm aiming for 5...**

 **Enjoy!**

Watching thunderstorms was always one of Nico's favourite things to do. He loved the way the sky filled with pregnant black clouds, loved the way the rain came down in heavy lashings like Zeus was brandishing a whip. But most of all, he loved the lightning.

He could watch it zigzag across the sky for hours on end, each white flash searing his eyeballs and leaving glowing marks in his eyelids. He especially enjoyed trying to guess where each dash of light would land.

His rented apartment in New Rome never gave a good view of the sky, and he was still banned from shadow travelling by a certain child of Apollo, so he was glad that he'd made the decision to ride Blackjack back from Camp Jupiter to Half-Blood Hill earlier that day. Flying during a thunderstorm was a particularly stupid thing to do: the only people to have tried it so far were Jason, who was of course lightning proof, and Percy, who's thick skull absorbed most of the strike. He'd still spent a good week in the infirmary though, with Annabeth swinging between the extremes of yelling at him loudly enough for the whole camp to hear, to kissing him for ever increasing lengths of time (Nico had been spending quite a bit of time helping out in the infirmary, for completely innocent, public-protecting reasons that had _nothing whatsoever_ to do with the afore mentioned child of Apollo). It had been a relief to almost the whole camp when he'd pulled through, although Clarisse expressed regret at his full recovery. Just in time for capture the flag, too...

No one else had bothered to try it (although there were rumours that Clarisse would, to prove she could do anything Kelp Head could).

The thunder rumbled outside, and he pulled the curtains open even wider to get a better view.

Of course, the storm would just go around the valley, storms always did. But they were still exiting to watch...

Will hated thunderstorms, he remembered, and then chided himself. _You don't care about him. Bad Nico._

Another roll of thunder preceded the downpour. One of the things he particularly liked about watching a thunderstorm from Camp Half-Blood was the way the rain stopped about two hundred metres above the centre of camp and slid around it to the boundary line, as though the entire camp was under a giant glass done. Sure, the water ran into the valley once it hit the ground, but only in very tiny trickles.

Pushing open the widow, Nico stuck his head outsized and cranes his neck so that he was looking straight up at the clouds. Then the rain started.

Only this time, the magical done did not divert the rain. Instead, the water droplets fell straight down, splashing onto the sandy basketball courts and hammering onto the roofs of the cabins, washing dust from their walls.

Nico blinked in astonishment. Not only was the rain disregarding the camp's magical boundaries, it was also...

Nico chuckled dryly to himself. "It's purple. The rain's _purple!"_

Then he wondered who he was talking to.

He watched the rain pound onto the strawberry patches, turning them into muddy swimming pools bad then overflowing down the hill, and waited. There was no storm without thunder. And thunder always came have in hand with lightning...

BOOM!

Even though he'd been expecting it, the sound still made him jump. A bright streak of acid green light followed a moment later, striking a statue of Zeus in the centre of the open area between cabins.

 _Ironic,_ Nico smirked.

The thunder rolled again, and another green bolt split the violet rain and landed on the edge of the forest.

There was _definitely_ something magical about the storm.

 _I wonder if anyone else is watching this_... his gaze strayed to the Apollo cabin for a few moments; he caught himself and looked away quickly, as though the golden building had burnt his eyes.

Watching a few more of the strangely coloured lightning strikes, he wondered idly whether Jason would be able to control them, and then pondered whether the purple rain would change the colour of the bay. He wished he could see Percy's expression if that did happen...

Yawning, he stumbled over to his bed and tumbled into oblivion.

/*\

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Nico jerked awake, sweat glistening on his pale forehead. Groaning to himself, he rolled over to check the clock by his bed, silently cursing who ever it was that had seem fit to wake him at...

 _2:12?_!

He was going to kill them, whoever they were, even if they _had_ interrupted one of his worst nightmares yet.

Grabbing a hoodie from the bed post and pulling it over his bare chest, he got up and looked at the window.

The storm was still raging around camp; the basketball courts were covered in puddles the size of tanks, and violet waterfalls were gushing from the roof of cabin 3. Green lightning raced towards the bay.

He could leave them out there on the storm. That would teach them to wake him up...

BAM! BAM!

"NICO! Open up!"

He recognised the voice, but couldn't quite place it...

If _it's important, they'll come back in the morning,_ he reasoned, and turned back to his pile of blankets.

"If you don't open this door in the next three seconds, I'm going to break it down! I _mean_ it!"

 _Or not_.

He opened the door. Standing in a bedraggled heap on his porch was Lou Ellen, her hair hanging in rat's tails and her soaked clothes clinging to her agile frame. He looked quickly at her face, blushing slightly, and she barged past him into the room, slamming the door behind her.

"L-Lou," he stammered. Sure, they'd hung out a few times since the fall of Gaia, but he didn't know whether they were friends, or allies, or what? He certainly didn't expect her to come barging into his cabin in the middle of the night in a magical thunderstorm, looking as though she'd been swimming in the bay, and dripping water over the carpet.

"Ni-Nico," she replied, teeth chattering. "S-sorry for the t-time. I j-just need you t-to do something for m-me. Then I'll be on m-my way."

"...um, okay?" Nico ventured. He didn't know what the daughter of Hecate would ask him, and he wasn't sure if he shouldn't be worried for his soul.

But Lou didn't ask for his soul, or anything like that. Instead, she thrust a dripping wet bundle into his arms. "Have a cat. Bye!"

"Woah, wait! What?!" Nico stared first at her, then at the writhing bundle of soaked fur he was clutching against his chest.

"Just for a f-few days, Neeks!" She yanked the door open and vanished into the night.

"What do I do with a cat?!" He cried after her, but he didn't get a reply.

He realised suddenly that the hoodie he'd been wearing was now covered in water from the cat's fur. "Thanks a lot, cat."

He dropped it onto the end of his mattress and pulled the thing back off, dumping it over a chair in the corner. He looked back at the animal just in time to see it tuck its face under its paws, obscuring wide blue eyes.

As he got back into bed, the thing curled up near his feet and started purring. "What am I meant to do with you, eh?"

"Meow," the cat replied. Ah, well. It had been worth a try. Once, the Hecate had procured a talking hippo from somewhere...

"Well, you can't sleep on my bed."

It ignored this and scooted closer to his toes.

"I mean it. Gerroff..." he yawned, and fell asleep.

The golden cat stayed curled up on his ankles as the storm raged around the Hades cabin, and Nico slept soundly. Nightmares did not trouble him for the first time in a very long while.

And the cat purred.

 **A/N If you liked it, please hit the magic box marked review!**

 **~Fi**

 **(Book** ** _Fi_** **end)**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N Hiya! I know, I need to write Lightningstruck Dove... but I'm being forced to socialize, and trying to read Hidden Oracle... (I'm five chapters in. Apollo is sooo annoying!)**

Nico woke up with the cat on his chest, purring with enough force to cause a small earthquake. He pushed it off grumpily, and stared out the window at the watery rising sun.

Breakfast wouldn't be ready for another few hours yet: good.

He found himself watching the Apollo cabin, waiting for the door to open... No. Nope, nope, nope. He certainly wasn't looking for the certain son of the sun god to go on his dawnly run; he never did. He just... happened to watch most mornings. It was a totally innocent thing to open his curtains and watch his neighbours...

Nope. He'd have to get better at lying to himself.

Dragging his gaze away from the metallic cabin, he rolled out of bed and grabbed a pair of jeans, a shirt reading 'Don't talk to me... on any day with a Y', and got dressed.

As he did so, the golden cat Lou had given him the night before buried its face in his duvet, and didn't look at him again until he started moving furniture. So the cat didn't want to watch him get dressed. He was fine with that, if a little suspicious.

It made him feel kind of self-conscious; he wondered again why Lou had given it to him.

Pushing a few chairs to the edges of the room, he created an empty space about three metres in diameter, and sat down next to the animal. It regarded him suspiciously.

He might as well try to talk to it.

"Don't tell Will, okay?" He told it, and was almost sure that it rolled its orb-like blue eyes at him, as if to say, _well,_ duh, _I'm a_ cat.

"Fine then." He concentrated hard on the ground below his cabin. At first, nothing happened - then, a skeletal hand thrust its way up through the floor boards. The cat jumped and hissed - not at the skeleton, though: it hissed at him. Smart cat.

Nico put the fully assembled skeleton through the basic routines that he'd worked out over the last year; practising in the early hours of morning and the late hours of night, when he was sure that no-one would burst in on him and report his disobedience of doctor's orders to anyone else. Because Will had still not told him that he could do his 'underworldly magic' yet.

"Meow!" Nico jumped. It was the first time the animal had said anything to him, and he let go of his control over the skeleton in shock. It melted back through the floor, and the cat purred again.

"You just ruined it," he snapped, running a hand across his brow.

In a spur of the moment decision, he stood up and walked to one end of his cabin. "Stay there," he told the animal, "and I'll appear next to you."

It was the first time he'd tried shadow travel since the Gaea war, but he was full of energy. Nothing would go wrong.

The cat, however, seemed to think otherwise. It stood up and hissed audibly, its ears flat against its yellow fur, then streaked across the room to where he stood.

"What are you... hey!" He cried, as it climbed up his leg and took a position on his head, blocking his eyes with its paws. "Get off!"

He tried to dislodge it, but it swiped at him with its claws extended, drawing a line of blood on his hand.

The cat didn't want him to shadow travel.

/*\

Three hours later, Nico was still unable to get the cat off of his head. He had tried pushing it, pulling it, simply shadow traveling away from it, crawling into a small space, and even sticking his head under a tap; no joy. The cat simply sat there like a warm, heavy hat.

With no other ideas, he decided to go to breakfast. Maybe Lou would be able to take the cat back...

Splashing through purple puddles was not fun. By the time he reached the pavilion, his boots were stained violet, and his feet were soaked. The cat stayed perfectly dry atop his hair, but most of his lower body got wet.

Stupid magical storms.

When he sat at his table (alone, as usual), he noted that the Hecate cabin had been busy over night: he was not the only one with a feline companion.

A muscled, brownish-red cat was eating off of Chris Rodriguez's plate, its sinewy tail flicking slightly. Chris had a long line of scratched up each arm, but he didn't seem to care much. A jet black creature lay around Annabeth's neck like a scarf, purring loudly, and a midnight blue cat wove its way between plates on the Hecate table.

Nico didn't have much experience with cats, but he was fairly certain that they weren't meant to be blue.

He called up a plate of cat food for the one on his head, and it sniffed in disgust.

"You're meant to eat it, cat. I think it's supposed to be good for you."

It turned its nose up. Nico found that he had to agree - the plate of meat coloured mush did not look very appetising. "Fine."

The cat ended up eating most of his bacon, some of his eggs, and a tomato. He was _certain_ that cats didn't eat tomatoes.

He wasn't the only one to pay a visit to Hecate cabin after breakfast: Annabeth and Chris followed him away from the pavilion.

"You got a cat too, Nico?"

"Gee, Annabeth, how can you tell?"

Chris chuckled and tried to adjust his grip on his cat. It yowled and swiped at his face, leaving a trail of blood.

"I swear, Clarisse would love this cat," he winced. "They're just as violent as each other..."

Nico frowned. "Where was Clarisse this morning, anyway?"

He shrugged. "Didn't turn up for breakfast. It's not unusual."

Will always ate breakfast in the infirmary - it was remarkably unusual for him to _turn up_ to the meal. Not that Nico cared, of course.

Annabeth rapped smartly on the Hecate cabin door, and then pushed her way in past the short, green haired girl that opened it. Honestly, what was with the Hecate kids and dying their hair...?

"Okay, Lou, explain. You come into my cabin in the middle of a thunderstorm, give me a cat, and run off - to give these two pets of their own, I guess. Why?"

She dropped her cat on the floor, and it stretched lazily. A brownish blur flashed from Chris' arms, and his cat swiped at the black one. The golden cat still did not move from its post on Nico's head. His neck was starting to hurt.

"Okay... well... what happened... was..." Lou looked desperately at a boy with magenta hair, and he smiled at them.

"So, you know how we run out of ingredients all the time?"

"No," he, Chris, and Annabeth chorused.

"Well, we do," the boy continued. "And this time, we ran out of something that can only be obtained from a certain type of monster..."

"Yeah!" Burst out Lou, slightly over enthusiastically. "So we organised a team to go and fetch some new stuff."

Annabeth raised her eyebrow sceptically. "So, what's the ingredient called?"

"Um..."

The magenta haired boy cut in again. "Oh, pocheous teeth. Very powerful. Used for anti-burglary charms."

"Yes," agreed Lou. "And in the team, we put Percy, Clarisse, our sister Midnight, and Will."

"...Oh...kay. But that still doesn't explain why I need a cat," pressured Chris.

"Well," the Hecate child floundered, "we thought you guys might be lonely. Without them. And-"

"Why in _Hades,"_ interrupted Nico, "would you think that Will going on a quest make me lonely?!"

Annabeth shot him a look that said, _really?_ but other than that, they ignored his outburst.

"And so we got you guys cats," she finished calmly. "You just have to look after them until they... get back from their quest."

"Bye!" Squeaked the green haired girl as they were ushered out of the cabin by Lou's brother.

/*\

"She's lying," announced Annabeth the moment the door closed behind them.

"That seemed like a pretty reasonable explanation, Annabeth," argued Chris, who was still trying to get his cat to stop spitting at the black one.

Nico said nothing, still trying to imagine how Will going on a quest would make people think he was lonely. Sure, he talked to him when they were in the infirmary together, but it wasn't like he knew Will's timetable or anything...

Okay, it was exactly like that, but no-one else knew that.

"Because, Chris, there's no such thing as pocheous teeth. I'm gonna find out where Percy went, and why I need a cat. I don't _want_ a cat!" Her cat jumped so badly that it fell off her shoulders, and the blue eyed animal _still_ on Nico's head made a hissing noise that might have been the feline equivalent of a laugh.

"I have... stuff to do," he said. "Good luck with that, Annabeth."

He hurried off towards the archery range. Will had a class on in ten minutes; if he really was on a quest, this was the easiest way to find out.

"Keep quiet," he instructed the cat, and it batted his nose gently.

Will did not turn up to archery. Nor did he come to his afternoon shift in the infirmary. Nico even checked all the beds in both the hospital and the Apollo cabin in case he was ill.

Nope.

"Wake up, cat." It had fallen asleep, still in its nest of hair. "We're going back to my cabin."

Nico pulled open the door and then crossed the room in a few short strides to collapse onto his bed. The cat _finally_ jumped off and say on his chest instead.

"I just noticed something," he told it. "Percy had black hair... so does Annabeth's cat. Clarisse had... whatever colour it is that Chris' cat has. I bet Midnight had dark blue hair... and you and Will have the same shade hair - fur - as well. What do you think of that?"

The cat stood up and started pacing.

"The Hecate kids must have tried really hard to get cats similar to the people they're replacing," Nico finished.

It gave him a look of disgust, and settled disappointedly back onto the bed.

Then it jumped up as though it had been struck by electricity, and leapt off the bed, dashing towards the nearest wooden wall, where it began to scratch viciously.

"Hey, don't do that!"

 **A/N So that was not one of my best chapters. But I've been awake for almost 18 hours, and socializing kinda stops my brain from functioning...**

 **~Fi**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N I am suffering from a bad cold and also writer's block. How fun.**

Nico jumped off his bed and scooped the cat up. It hissed at him and drew its claws up his arm, but he didn't let it go. "I'm sorry, but you're not ruining my cabin."

"Meow! Psssst!" It swiped at the wall again, scrabbling against his chest with its back feet.

By the time he managed to subdue it, the area of wall was scratched beyond repair, and his T-shirt was shredded beyond recognition.

He ran his fingers through its silky fur and it arched its back and purred.

"I know how you feel, cat, but you can't just take it out on the furniture..." the cat turned its blue orbs on him.

"There was this one time, just after the war with Gaea - how would you know about _that?_ You're a cat." The cat looked offended. "But I was in the infirmary, and I'd just heard from my father that Octavian had gone to Elysium for sacrificing his life to save Rome, no matter how many innocent lives he'd ruined, and I just lost it..."

He had started swearing at the top of his voice, and had grabbed his sword and marched over to the edge of the forest. The grass had been withering around him, and bones were bubbling up to the surface with every step he took. When he reached the shade of the trees, he had been preparing to shadow jump into the underworld, but for some reason, he couldn't. It hadn't taken him long to realise that Will had been blocking his shadow travel skills, and when he did, he was furious.

He'd turned on the healer, sworn at him enough to make the trees behind him scrunched their leaves up; when the healer still did not let him go, the air around them had rapidly dropped to freezing, and all the plants in a 20 metre radius had withered and died. He'd summoned six skeletons and half a wolf. They surrounded Will, who _still_ did not let Nico leave for the underworld, and Will had shouted at Nico.

"Stop it, Nico. This won't solve anything. The only person you're going to hurt is yourself."

He dropped the skeletons then. It wasn't because he _agreed_ with what the medic was saying, he told the cat, it was because he couldn't let them hurt him. He'd nodded to Will's suggestion that they returned to the infirmary, took two steps forward, and blacked out.

When he'd woken up, the blonde boy had been fussing over him. He agreed to stay there for another three days.

"But my point is," he finished, "that it doesn't help trying to destroy stuff when you're mad."

The cat rolled onto its back and let him scratch its stomach.

"I hope he's alright. Will, I mean. He's not really the questing type..." the cat hissed gently.

"Can you keep a secret?"

He wasn't sure why he was telling the cat all this. He supposed that he just needed to say it out loud - just once in his life.

The cat looked at him. He guessed that meant yes.

"Okay, you can't tell anyone this. But... I really, _really_ like him. Will, I mean. He -"

"Nico! Nico!" Annabeth burst into the cabin. "Um, what are you doing?"

Nico had to think about it.

"I was trying to stop it from destroying my cabin," he gestured at the scarred skirting board. Annabeth raised her eyebrow at his mangled shirt, but didn't say anything. "And now I guess I'm talking to it. Why?"

"Lou Ellen lied to us, Nico! They didn't get us these cats to replace Percy and Clarisse!"

The golden cat meowed loudly, and Annabeth added a hasty, "and Will and Midnight," to her list.

"So we just got given the results of an experiment. So?" Nico paced over to his wardrobe and grabbed a fresh top.

"No, Nico!" Annabeth removed her cat from around her neck and put it on the floor. "Look. This 'cat' was supposed to replace Percy, yes? Look at it."

Nico obliged. "What?"

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "It's got exactly the same colour fur as Percy does."

"I know that. The Hecate cabin did a really good job of finding them."

She ignored this and ploughed on. "It also has the same colour eyes - exactly the same. And, when I was eating skittles just now, I tried offering it some."

"Woah woah woah," Nico put up a hand. "You eat _skittles?_ Forget that, you try to feed your _cat_ skittles?"

"Your cat ate a tomato earlier," she snapped, cheeks pink. "And I happen to like skittles."

"Sorry."

"But the point is, it wouldn't eat the red ones. Or the purple ones. The only skittles the cat ate were... the blue ones."

Nico thought about this. "Are you trying to tell me," he said slowly, "that that cat... is... Percy?"

 _"Yes!"_ Annabeth shouted. "The Hecate cabin turned him into a cat and gave him to me!"

Nico turned to his own cat in growing horror. "Wait... so that's..."

"Will, yes. Try to keep up, Nico."

Nico went bright pink. Of all the stupid, _stupid_ things to do, didn't he just have to talk about his crush in front of something. And of course, he should have expected it to be Will, because the Fates hated him.

"-co? Are you alright? You're blushing."

"I'm fine," he snapped. "So this is W-Will. Fine. I'm guessing that that foul tempered cat of Chris's is Clarisse?"

"Yep." She still looked worried. "Are you sure you're-"

"Yes! I'm _fine!_ What are you going to do about it?"

She raised her hands in mock surrender. "I'm going to make Lou turn him back, of course. Come on."

She put her cat - Percy - back around her neck, and walked towards the door. When Nico didn't follow, she looked at him.

He didn't want to be there when Will turned back. Not after what he'd just unknowingly told him.

"Can you take - Will? I'll just... stay here." He tried hard not to look at the golden animal sitting next to him.

"No. Come on, Nico."

Sighing, he switched his T-shirt for the undamaged one - "Thanks, Will," - and stood up to leave. The blue eyed cat tried to jump on his head again, and he batted it away.

"Absolutely not. You can walk." He walked off, muttering under his breath about never trusting furry animals or Hecate kids.

/*\

"Open up, Lou! Now!" Annabeth kicked the door of the Hecate cabin. Nico almost wanted to tell her that that was probably not a good idea - who knew what kind of curses it was enchanted with - but he was too busy glaring at Will the cat.

The same green haired girl as earlier opened the door. "Lou's gone out."

"We'll wait then," Annabeth strode into the cabin as though she owned the place.

When Lou Ellen and the magenta haired boy from that morning re-entered the cabin an hour later, they probably weren't expecting to see Annabeth and Nico sitting in there, glaring at them.

"Put them back," she said crisply.

"I knew it was a bad idea to give him to Annabeth," the boy muttered.

"Shhh, Stevie." Then Lou Ellen addressed the two of them. "We can't."

"What do you mean, you can't?!" Exploded Annabeth. "Just do the opposite to whatever spell you did to make them like this!"

Nico just scolded deeper, watching Percy try to walk around the rim of a cauldron (cliche, much?).

Lou swallowed. "That's the thing. It wasn't our spell - it was out mother's. And we can't undo it."

 **A/N Whaddya think? Like I said. I had writer's block, so this probably isn't as good as some of my other stuff...**

 **~Fi**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N I'm suffering. Hey, it's Halloween tomorrow!**

This statement did not have the effect that Lou clearly wanted it to have. Instead of looking impressed, or surprised, or anything outside of normal, Annabeth simply motioned for her to keep talking.

"Um, so, yeah. We can't undo it." Lou looked uncomfortably at the Midnight, who was walking upside down across the ceiling.

"Why can't you undo it? And when did it happen?" Nico would not have been surprised to see Annabeth taking notes - she was acting as though this was a grand inquisition.

Percy stopped watching Midnight, and tried walking up the wall the way she had done.

"Well, that storm we had last night? The purple one with green lightning? That was Hecate creating a new spell. Only, some of the stuff she chucked away... landed on certain campers."

"Percy, Will, Clarisse, and Midnight," Annabeth guessed.

"Yes." Nico watched in mild surprise as Percy managed to use his claws to drag himself up the nearest wall. He was trying to avoid looking at Will.

"And they turned into cats due to your mother's spell," Annabeth summarised. "But, why can't you turn them back?"

Lou picked up some herbs and started shredding them. "Because we don't have the right stuff. We need Ketoblepone guts, and they're only found in Africa now."

Percy tried to walk over the ceiling using his claws to hold him up, managed a few steps, then fell into the same cauldron that he'd been walking around earlier.

Annabeth rolled her eyes, and scooped the lithe, now bright pink cat out of the mixture.

Lou chuckled. "That won't wear off for at least a fortnight, Percy."

Percy sniffed and buried his head in Annabeth jumper.

"Can't we do it without the Ketoblepone guts, Lou?"

"No. We're still trying to get a quest to find some..."

"I can get some," said Nico, surprising even himself. He hadn't been planning on offering to help; he wasn't sure that he even wanted Will returned to normal - not now he'd ruined whatever friendship there had been between them by blurting out his crush.

"You can? That's great, Nico," enthused Lou, and Annabeth looked pleased. "Then we can try the counter spell!"

"Wait, what? _Try_ the counter spell, Lou?" Her grey eyes glinted dangerously. "You mean you haven't done it before?!"

Nico left before Annabeth could start shouting. He had been planning on slipping away quietly, but Will clearly heard him, and followed him out.

"Stop following me."

The golden furred cat miowed quietly, and Nico gave up. Let him follow if he wanted to.

He spent three quarters of an hour digging through the trunk at the end of the bed, emerging finally with a large plastic binder. Picking his way through the piles of junk now covering the floor, he sat on his bed and opened it, smiling nostalgicly at the contents.

The African Extreme Expansion pack was at the very back, so he was able to look through every single card he had before finding it. Pulling the Katoblepone card from its place by the Biloku, he left the cabin once more, and headed towards the cabin set aside for those that chose to follow the path of the Muses.

Will followed him, watching from the railing of the porch as he knocked.

"I need a favour."

 **A/N I am very disappointed with this chapter. But I have no idea where this is going any more, so oh, well.**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N I'm SOO SORRY! I had severe writers block, and was really busy... but here is the update!**

There was only one person in the cabin - Melinda. She and her three sisters were trying to follow the path of the nine Muses, with occasional input from Rachel and frequent godly visits.

She looked up from her painting and turned her sapphire eyes on Nico. "What?"

 _Her eyes aren't as nice as Will's_ , Nico found himself thinking. _They're too cold.._.

Then he shook himself and held out the mythomagic card. "Can you do that thing on this?"

She put her paintbrush in a pot of water, stood up, and took the card. A strand of chocolate hair was clinging to her forehead, the rest was tied back in a messy bun. "I could," she allowed.

Nico sighed internally. Talking to Melinda - or any of her sisters - was always slow and arduous, and most people didn't bother. Why waste a good hour talking in riddles when you could be in the forest, killing monsters? The sisters preferred to keep themselves to themselves mostly, and so they weren't offended by the lack of other conversationalists.

Nico, however, had had to ask for several favours in the past few months, as did Annabeth, so he has some experience talking to them.

"So, _will_ you?"

She considered him with her not-as-kind-as-Will's eyes, then stated that she might.

Nico ground his teeth together. Getting angry with her never produced faster results - in fact, you often ended up being so confused by their conversation that you spent the following week trying to work out exactly _where_ you lost the argument.

"What's your price?" They always wanted something - usually objects and things for inspiration for their pieces, but occasionally they had wanted Nico to pose for them. Those were incidents best forgotten... By far the funniest time was when they had made Annabeth sing for them in return for a pointer on organising the painting gallery on Olympus.

"What can you give me?"

This was going to take even longer than usual. "I can get you some of that paint? You know, the... uh... you know, the one from near the Styx?"

"Memory White? That's a nice colour, that one." She put the Katoblepone card down beside her and picked up her brush again.

"Yeah, I can get you another pot of that if you do this for me," he pressed.

"Hmm..." she dabbed at the canvas. "This spell takes a lot of magic..."

Gods, this was like getting blood from a stone. And Nico should know - he'd had to do that once. "What do you want?"

"Now that's an interesting question..." she washed her brush. "I want a lot of things. I want to become a mistress of the arts. I want a large house. I want to finish my painting. I want all this and more..."

 **/*\**

It took almost two hours of careful conversation to get Melinda to agree to do the spell, and then her sisters returned and Nico had to persuade them to help. Add to that the considerable amount of things that Nico had to collect to both pay the Musettes for their services, and the things that they actually needed for their charm, it was well past midnight when they were finally ready.

Will had fallen asleep on the railing on the porch, and Nico had since moved him to a chair. Very carefully, though, because he didn't want Will to realise what he was doing. It was bad enough to have confessed his crush to him by accident - it would be worse if he woke up whilst being carried by him.

Throwing the Katoblepone card into the centre of a pomegranate seed circle (each of the seeds came from one of the pomegranates in Persephone's garden), Melinda started lighting candles - candles that Nico had had to find and steal from the actual Muses' residence.

He had no idea why the Musettes needed all this junk (including the thumb bones from thirteen different skeletons, holy water taken directly from the Pope's house in Rome, fire from the branch of knowledge and life, and a lamb's heart) when the Hecate cabin needed almost nothing to produce spells, but he didn't knock it. Anything to avoid another three hour long conversation with Melinda and her sisters.

Bethany began to chant, and Carlotta and Valerana threw pinches of stuff onto the candles, bathing the room in a pinkish glow. Melinda grabbed Nico's hand and dragged him towards the circle and the card within it, producing a small silver knife as she did so and swiping it across his palm. He hissed but gave no other indication of the pain, watching instead the shower of brilliant red fall onto the mythomagic card.

The card jumped.

It writhed and distorted, becoming taller and bulkier, three dimensional and furred, until a full grown katoblepone stood before them, glaring at the ground. It didn't stop there.

In a few more seconds, the creature had doubled itself, splitting and reforming; a few seconds later, four monsters stood in the centre.

Nico backed away. "What's going on?!"

Bethany dropped her chanting. "Well, your cat seems to have woken up - but who am I to say that? It is up to the animal what it sees and feels - and Melinda has dropped her dagger. Carlotta -"

The summoned monsters moved out of the circle, first slowly, then stampeding out of the cabin.

"With the katoblepone! Katoblepones! Not the world in general!" Nico roared, finally beyond stretching point. Fortunately, it was Valerana who answered him - she was, out of the four sisters, by far the easiest to talk to. At least, he could usually get a more or less straight answer out of her when they spoke.

"The spell went wrong and they're multiplying!"

And... that was pretty much what he'd expected. They were still appearing out of nowhere, afterall. "Try to stop it!"

He sprinted out of the cabin after the katoblepones.

 **/*\**

In the short amount of time that had elapsed between the katoblepones' leaving the cabin and Nico's leaving the cabin, they had managed to wreck considerable havoc on the camp. The ground had been dug up in several places - presumably in a search for food -, several dryads were trying to nurse sickened trees back to life, and a camper was sitting against a tree, his face a sickly green.

Nico drew his sword. Keeping behind the first creature, he brought his sword down on its spine and it melted into dust, leaving only a pile of steaming intestines.

"Urgh."

One of the others turned around and glared at him - but he'd learnt his lesson in Venice and kept his eyes to the ground. A quick slash of his sword, and the thing was gone too.

By then, the herd still spilling from the Muses' cabin had realised that they were being hunted.

"Where's Frank when you need him?" He asked dryly, then raised his sword once more and attacked.

By the time a blaze of rose coloured light from the Muses' cabin signified the end of the spell, the ground around him was littered with guts and fur. Only a few beasts were left, but Nico shepherded them towards the woods - spice up the hunting, he thought.

Then he turned his attention to the pile of offal at his feet. He shouldn't need more than a few handfuls of this...

It was still warm, sticky and squishy to the tough, and he wished he was wearing gloves. Killing dozens of monsters was one thing; picking around in their intestines was quite another.

A retching sound from by his feet brought his attention to Will. "If you didn't want to see it, you shouldn't have followed me out," he scolded the cat, before heading back towards the Hecate cabin.

Let the Musettes tidy up by themselves - he couldn't deal with them again that day.

 **/*\**

"So... to cut a long story short, you persuaded them to being your mythomagic card to life, it got out of control, you killed it, and brought me its guts?" Lou Ellen concluded.

Annabeth was asleep in an armchair, Percy curled contentedly on her lap. Surprisingly - or not - Chris was also there, struggling with the foul tempered brown cat. He bore no more visible claw marks, but had an air on great exhaustion. He'd nodded once as Nico entered the cabin, but said nothing.

"That sounds right," he replied.

She grinned. "Good enough for me!"

"So, are you going to turn them back now...? Because I need to..." he gestured towards the door - he wanted to try and avoid human Will for a few days now.

Smiling devilishly, Lou snapped her fingers, and his knees buckled, a chair zooming up to catch him. He glared at her. "Let me go."

She poked out her tongue and winked, then hurled the katoblepone guys into a cauldron.

There was a hissing sound, a few sharp cracks, and the air was filled with a heavy, pugnant smoke.

 **A/N Not one of my better chapters... Next update should be Lightningstruck Dove.**

 **Last chapter coming up, guys! thanks to everyone!**

 **~Fi**


	6. Chapter 6

**AN I'm sorry! Writers block, Black Butler, Mortal Instruments...**

At first, the smoke enveloped everything. Nico could neither hear not see, and the only scent that he could catch was the pugnant odour issuing from Lou's cauldron. Then, gradually, the smog cleared, revealing the cabin almost exactly as it had been before the katoblepone entrails had been added to the potion; with four major additions.

Percy, pink haired and red in the face, hit the floor with a muffled curse as Annabeth dropped him, not prepared for the cat to more than quadruple in weight.

"Percy!" She helped him up and hugged him, then eyed him critically. "Pink might have suited you as a cat, but now..."

Chris smiled sheepishly at Clarisse, who scowled and turned her back on him. He sighed, rolled his eyes, and started trying to get her to talk to him.

Midnight, though returned to human form - she was a small girl of about twelve, with deep bluish purple hair that would probably hangs down to the small of her back - remained on the ceiling, her feet spread shoulder width apart and the tips of her hair just tickling the end of Nico's nose. She giggled. "I _like_ being a cat..."

Will, in the centre of the rug, stood up slowly and turned to face him. His expression was unreadable as he caught Nico's gaze and held it; Nico wanted nothing more than to leave. Will would surely hate him now - he was never going to talk to another animal again, let alone the son of Apollo before him.

To his surprise, he found he could move again - Lou's enchantment must have worn off. He stood up abruptly and turned towards the door. "I have to... do something. I have a very important... thing to do..."

Lou looked up from the potion, which was smoking lightly. "No, Nico, stay -"

"No, I've got to... a thing, you know?" Then he was outside, breathing heavily. A thing? _Really?_ At least he'd managed to avoid speaking directly at anyone... and now he could barricade himself n his cabin for the next three years.

He took a step away from the cabin, then another, then another, gaining speed. Then a hand clamped down on his arm.

"Nico, stop."

He groaned, and tried to yank his arm away. "Go away, Will. Go away and leave me alone."

The other released him suddenly, clearly shocked by his cold tone; when he tried to walk away , however, Will grabbed his wrist with both hands and spun him around. His light blue eyes were serious, and held none of their usual laughter.

Nico closed his eyes. Will was going to yell at him, and then he'd walk away and -

He was falling forward. Will had tugged sharply at his wrists and he'd lost his balance, and he was falling; then arms, warm and safe, wrapped around him.

He was being hugged. Will was hugging him.

After a second of numb incomprehension, he started struggling fruitlessly. "Will - what're you - gerroff!"

"Will you stop being an idiot and come and talk with me if I do?"

Nico deliberated on this for a moment. Will didn't _sound_ angry, but he _was_ very good at hiding his emotions... on the other hand, Will was physically stronger than him - he couldn't get away without Will's consent. He nodded.

"Okay then..." Will let go of him and started walking towards the Apollo cabin; mentally screaming that this was a bad idea, Nico followed.

"What is it?"

Will looked hurt. "I... I mean, I just - in your cabin, earlier, you -"

"If this is about what I said earlier," he cut in, "then you can forget it. I can stay out of your way, and you can go back and live your life as though you never knew, okay? The way you want it to be."

He turned to go, but Will's voice called him back.

"Why would I want _that?"_

Now Nico lost his temper. "Well, why wouldn't you want it?! Why would you want to know your friend was - who would want that?! No-one, that's w-"

With a snake like movement, almost faster than Nico's eyes could track him, Will leaned forward and pressed his lips to his, cutting off his monologue. His eyes widened, and when Will pulled away he started sputtering incoherently.

"Wh - Will - wh - you -" Nico shook his head. "What was that for?" He asked weakly.

"Because I like you, idiot. A lot." Will smiled and kissed him again, and this time Nico returned the kiss.

"I'm glad you're not a cat, Will."

Will chuckled. "Me too, Death Boy. Me too."

 **The End**

 **A/N Reviews always welcome!**

 **~Fi**


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